


Lost in the Water

by Crypterion_Moon



Series: The Sea where my Heart Belongs [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Awkwardness, Blood, Emotional Hurt, Fluff and Humor, M/M, MerMay 2019, Regret, Shapeshifting, Slow Burn, Unethical Experimentation, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2020-04-08 00:56:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19096459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crypterion_Moon/pseuds/Crypterion_Moon
Summary: Bruce had spent months to years looking for his third son who he'd let slip through his fingers. He'd do anything to fix his failures, to see Tim again. They all held their own regrets, the little Robin was gone. They'd all lost hope of ever finding him until they all took a trip to the aquarium.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to My Heart Grows Cold. A late tribute to Mermay since I was away on a trip. Shoutout to xamuletx, they were very close for guessing half-atlantean.

“Got something in the nets, son?” Will called out to his son as he watched the young man haul up the nets in excitement only to see his face fall with disappointment.

“Nothing, Dad, just a few stragglers and young fish.”

Will leaned back against the mast looking up at the blazing sun, looks like it was going to be one of those days, “We can wait a bit, maybe get lucky this time.”

“Fifth time the charm?” Ricky said with an answering smirk.

“Yup, fifth time’s the charm,” he wasn’t willing to give up yet, their family had been good fishers back in the day. Wouldn’t make his father and his father’s father proud to hear he chickened out and threw in the towel just because of a bad day, and Will liked to keep it that way. His son though, was restless. So he pulled out a beer for the both of them.

“You still seeing that girl at the aquarium?”

“Dad,” Rick said, the reprimanding tone creeping into his voice.

“What, genuine question son, especially since it’s about girls and all.”

“I see Celia all the time whether I want to or not, it’s my day job, in case you forgot.”

“Yeah, don’t think I don’t see you staring out over the damn pool everytime you work together, kid, I’ve been there, I know when you’re fallin for it.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Ricky snorted as he gulped his beer.

“Well of course, women, I’m telling you, are worse than sharks, your mother, god I love her though, is a shark. Knows how to keep this family going without having to lift a finger.”

“Unlike you right?” Ricky said, hinting at the many times his Dad pulled out a rifle at the smallest transgression.  
“I got my own charm.”

“Right, I’m sure Mom loves the idea I take after you.” The drank beer and chatted late into the afternoon, every so often checking the nets and the surrounding waters around their fishing boat. Still no sign of schools of catch.

“Looks like it really is time to pack up,” Will said disheartened. Rick lay a heavy hand on his father’s shoulder, giving it a firm pat.

“We tried, Dad,” he said.

“Well, can’t delay or your mother’s going to spend all evening having at me.”

They both got up and began to put the equipment away, getting ready to drag the nets back up, they’d keep whatever catch they could maybe save up on meals until the next time. Will had gone back in to start turning the boat back on and steer them back to shore, which always took at least about twenty minutes to warm up. More than enough time for his Ricky to start hauling the nets back up. While Will busied himself inside, Rick reached over the side and got a good grip on one. But as he tried to pull the net up, he realized it was a lot heavier than expected. He groaned.

“Dad, I think our net all trashed again.”

“We’ll deal with it when we get home, use the pulleys.”

Ricky muttered to himself about jerks and bums and their trash, as he strung them up, and began pulling with all his might. Thankful that this line of work kept him fit. But as he peeked over the edge, he spotted movement beneath the surface.

“No way,” he said as he kept pulling, “Dad, Dad, we got some!”

Will stopped messing with the buttons and glanced over the radar and sure enough, they were surrounded by what was most definitely a school of fish. He dashed out to help Ricky pull up the rest of the nets, finally seeing the shimmer of what was definitely today’s catch. They dunked the catch into the store before reaching for the second net together, pulling while laughing.

“We did get lucky, Dad.”

“Sure did, son, come on, this ain’t gonna pull itself up.”

Suddenly, Ricky stopped, “Wait, Dad, what’s that?”

Will looked up at the net now dangling heavily with fish, but nestled within the mass was definitely an arm, someone’s arm.

“Shit, pull, Rick.”

Frantic now, they pulled it aboard, dread filling their stomachs. It could be a dead body. Ricky didn’t want to lose his lunch over this but damn, he could see a little more as it spun on the ropes. The person was huddled up inside, not moving. He could catch the greyish blue of dead skin stretched tightly over bone. His mind ran circles just swearing.  
They let the pulley go and dropped everything in the net on the deck.  
Both Will and Rick expected to see the body, partially rotten, something to file to the cops, but as the looked among the masses of dying catch, they saw one long massive tail that slowly led up, as their eyes trailed along, to the upper body of a young man, with dark mid length hair, sharp features and seemingly unconscious.

“No friggin way,” Rick gasped.

Just at that point the definitely not dead creature opened it’s eyes, immediately spotting the two men standing in front of it. Only delaying for a second before it started hissing at them. Tail whipping wildly.

Will whistled, lifting his cap up, “Well call me a liar but I think we have a mermaid.”

 

Bruce sighed deeply. Letting his head fall against the plush leather headrest of the office chair. His eyes hurt from staring at small print on countless documents all week, at least, it should have only been a week but here he was, dealing with paperwork on the weekend from the not quite comfort of his own home. With Lucius away on a well-deserved vacation, the workload doubled to the point that Bruce couldn’t ignore it even if he wanted to. He only realized a week in how much he depended on having a pair of hands helping out, to which even Lucius had echoed his sentiment.  
Even with Jason back, staying most of the time in the manor and Dick helping out with patrols, the presence he used to take for granted, so much smaller and cautious than Damian’s was nowhere to be found. And the search continued for Tim, his third son, the other thing that weighed heavily on his mind.  
Since the night he had left, there was no trace of him anywhere in the city. Panic was slow to set in but when Dick realized that Tim hadn’t returned after a month, they finally began to look in earnest. Any one of his safehouses, any hidden sanctuaries he’d kept, all were but empty and lifeless, like they hadn’t been touched. Even the systems Tim had put in place had not any recorded activity since that night. Bruce was forced to call the League, the Titans, Tim’s closest friends for help. The expanded the search all over, trying to pick out a familiar face among the crowds of millions, a needle in a haystack. But they found nothing until they returned to Gotham’s problems.  
Red Robin’s uniform was found, neatly folded on a beach somewhere midway between Gotham and a distant city following the coast. Some kids had collected the clothes for safekeeping until they couldn’t keep it secret any longer.  
Tim had left, stripped his uniform and disappeared.  
Jason still bore a great deal of guilt for his abuse, as did Damian. The night Tim finally released all those bottled up thoughts, the hopelessness that he’d held in his carefully closed up heart still haunted Bruce. He could’ve done something. Dick regretted not stepping in when he should have, there were so many things they could have done differently, so many things they could have talked about but left unsaid.  
Bruce looked out towards the door of his study and for a moment, he almost thought he’d seen Tim, tiny and new, shy but full of life standing in the doorway, waiting for Bruce to finish up work and go on patrol. When did his little boy lose that light?  
Bruce blinked and instead, saw Damian, gaining height now, reaching far past Tim’s height at seventeen.

“You look as if you saw a ghost, Father.”

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose, “I think I did.”

“You are planning to go back to the beach, are you not?”

Bruce wasn’t surprised his son would bring this up, Damian had terrible social skills but was excellent at reading him like a book.

“I...was going to but, I think it’s time for a change of scenery,” Bruce added a wry smile, “I hear they renovated the aquarium.”

The mood was a strange mix of anticipation and sullen. It occurred to Bruce as they walked along beneath the winding walkways that neither Dick, nor Jason or Damian for that matter had ever been to an aquarium like this one. Damian especially, though he would never admit to his child-like awe, was quite taken with watching magnificent animals swimming overhead.  
Small and large, his eyes followed each and every one like a cat. He ran on ahead right up to the rails and stared out at the expanse of blue. Bruce let himself smile, for just a brief moment, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards at the sight of his boys exploring with a sense of awe. For once, they were more like children than vigilantes, something that they’d all lost on the streets of Gotham. Jason for sure, since a very young age only had time to worry about surviving, a trip like this was a far-off dream. Bruce would laugh at the sight of a young man nearly as grown as him wandering around like a ten-year old, excited.  
This was a side of all of them he’d missed. An ache pierced him again, his chest twinged with old pain. If Tim was here, he’d be running all around noting all the species and blabbering on an on. Bruce would have loved to see that. The boy used to talk about the sea so much, about how he’d love to go to the beach and watch the ocean. He missed Tim so much.  
He leaned against the rails, turning away to face the main aquarium area, so that no one could see him on the verge of tears.  
He should have listened that night. He should have stopped Tim, talked to him, like a father should. Instead he stood there with nothing but criticism upon criticism. When did they become this, he wondered, when did he leave the young boy who’d dedicated himself to the family, to the mission, to him, all alone out there to pull himself together. When had he begun to mistreat them all, neglect his poor Tim like that.  
The regret he held was like a bottomless container, full of things he should and should not have done.  
A cheery voice began to speak from all the PA devices, “And now, for our next and most exciting find yet. It’s almost like meeting an Atlantean itself. A real life mermaid!”

“Father, look,” Damian’s voice sounded so young for his age it made Bruce look up past the crowd. A large figure darted out from the cover of the rocks, twirling around the various imitation corals. When the figure finally reached the centre, only then did they seem to notice the large crowd now gathering at the glass ooh-ing and aww-ing at the sight. It looked human at least from the top down to the waist where the flesh met that of a large whale’s tail, bluish grey in the light but slender. The figure turned from looking over it’s shoulder to fully facing the crowd and now, Bruce could see everything.

“No,” he gasped ever so slightly under his breath, “It can’t be.”

“Tim?” he heard Dick say somewhere behind him, but he couldn’t turn away. There he was, his third Robin, in the water. Half man, half fish and staring out at them with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. Cold and inhuman.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not forgotten but time has not been on my side and I have not been very wise with my work load. I will work on everything I started but it will be slow

Eight and a half weeks earlier

Rick wasn’t sure what they were supposed to do with a catch like that. So the first thing he did was call his friend, a junior marine biologist, Erwin Tan. At first, the guy didn’t believe him, convinced that he’d been drinking too much again. But a loud, inhuman shriek and a shaky phone recording was enough to persuade Erwin that he wasn’t drunk nor hallucinating. Under careful instructions, they had the creature brought over to the center under the dead of night when everybody except for Erwin was gone home. They’d hauled the massive body over to one of the isolated pools away from all the other marine life.

“What happened to him?” Erwin questioned, noticing how out of it the mer was.

“We uh, had to bring out one of dad’s tranqs.”

“A tranquillizer gun?! Rick, you could’ve killed him!”

“It was that or he bites our heads off, okay? He LOOKS fine doesn’t he?”

They brought the mer over to the pool side, reaching just a little farther from the edge before it began to wake up. Really wake up.

“Whoa, SHIT!” Rick yelled as the massive tail nearly sliced him in two.

“Dude! Dude, you gotta...FUCK!,” Rick barely says before the massive tail whips around at them both slicing into an innocent pole standing against the support beam in two.. Both him and Erwin shouted in alarm. Erwin noted the tails is power and razor sharpness, then gets down low, hands out and non-threatening.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said as soothingly as he can manage, slowly approaching the merman now curled up against the wall of the control room where it had pushed itself to, hissing viciously. He doesn’t even know if it can understand him. Even if the top part looks human, they couldn’t immediately assume anything. He wished he had a direct line to Aquaman or something.

“We won’t hurt you, see,” he said holding his hands up, palms out in a peaceful gesture. The creature stopped hissing and snarling and tilted its head, like trying to process new information.

Rick watched his friend warily, wishing he had a gun or something in case the freak decided to get extra testy. But Erwin had forbidden him from bringing a firearm with them, his reasoning that it wasn’t some monster to be shot, it had to be protected. Rick certainly didn’t like the gleam in his friend’s eyes when he said those words.

“Be careful man, it was hell trying to get that thing here. It smashed the goddamn case and put a dent in the hull of my pop’s ship,” he said remembering how it carve and dented the makeshift cage it had been put in like it was plastic, and the pole which now lay in two parts. Will was also not happy to find a massive dent in his ship where it had slithered and slammed into in a vicious attempt to get away. 

“It’s okay,” Erwin continued, holding one hand out to the merman, offering it a large trout, “It’s going to be okay.”

The merman inspected him with the bluest, most intelligent eyes he’d ever seen, like it was made of pure sea, and morning sky. It watched before it reached back towards him with a webbed hand and tentatively, before snatching the fish out of his hand and diving into the pool to feast.

“Phew, see?”

“Erwin my man, you are insane.”

“That’s why I’m your best friend.”

Two weeks earlier

Erwin could safely say he’d earned the creature’s trust after a lot of coaxing and bribery with fresh fish. He studied it’s behavioral patterns, comprehension and reactions. The levels of intelligence exhibited were phenomenal, almost human level. It could understand base emotions and gestures, and it seemed to comprehend its situation.   
Despite being able to understand some human emotion, it rarely exhibited or appeared to react to things in the same way, when it did, it was more on a basic animal instinct. He could only conclude it’s empathy was more beast like than anything else, so sympathy was out of the question. At best, the mer knew not to aggravate any tension, that was, not attack everyone that came near it, which took some learning and a lot of rods. Though it could definitely do damage especially when someone was being less than nice, as one of the other employees got a nasty snapping when he mishandled the creature.  
Erwin, like others still had a hard time discerning the gender since they’d never seen a female or any other specimen like that, though he was almost certain this one was male from the general form.  
Its features and body structure varied between inhuman to human-like with a humanoid torso, arms that were long and wiry, its fingers longer than a human’s wrapped in a thin but strong membrane, his face was frighteningly human but very much alien, the pronounced nose ridge that lacked an indent, merged into flattened nostrils and it possessed razor sharp teeth. A bite from that could tear off skin and muscle in one go. The rest of its body was completely aquatic, the tail, long and slender moved vertically much like a whale’s, the tips of it extended a little farther into spines that was often what it used as weapons, he couldn’t exam it too closely but from what was observed, it could be bone but extra reinforced to the strength of steel of iron even, maybe that was the make-up of the mer’s bone structure.  
He had no doubt, creatures like this Merman existed deep in the depths where they couldn’t reach much like when the civilization of Atlantis was rediscovered a while ago, but he had never dreamed of seeing one.   
If they had not been seen before, there was a reason, but this one had ventured close enough to the surface to get caught in Rick and his father’s nets. Something had drawn it to the surface.  
Technically, he could ask to speak with Aquaman for his opinion, he’d be one to definitely know about them as an Atlantean, but contacting the league was harder than contacting the Russian embassy.  
So Erwin stuck to studying the Merman, somewhat befriending him. Rick also came by as well, sometimes watching, other times getting a little bit closer to see him up close. They hadn’t given the Mer a name yet though, honestly, they weren’t sure if they should of if it would be an insult.

By week six, Erwin and Rick were both greeted daily by the merman swimming up close to the edge with an expectant look in his eyes. Erwin couldn’t hold back his chuckle. 

“Are you really just happy to see us or is it the fish?” he said, shaking the bucket a little, the mer let out a high pitched wail that went from low to high, usually that meant happy or playful, or something similar. It could definitely communicate vocally, which meant it was either able to breathe air or store it somewhere. 

“Alright, here you go,” Erwin was about to empty out a few fish when the mer suddenly reached out and snatched the bucket out of his hands, letting it clatter to the ground and spill its contents into the pool, “Aargh, not the whole thing!”

The mer let out another lolling wail before slipping back underwater. Rick let out a hearty laugh as he helps salvage what fish they could for the rest of the aquarium.

“He seems to like teasing you,” he said playfully.

“Don’t start, that’s not how it works you know, I’ve been watching him a while and he’s more a wild predator than a puppy, I don’t think he knows how to play.”

They both sat back with the half full bucket between them watching the mer chewing into the belly of one fish, it shot them a glance before slipping under again, a few seconds later, the mer resurfaced at the edge staring at them with what Rick could almost swear was a sheepish look.

“I don’t know Erwin, looks more like a puppy to me, if not human,” Rick said almost absent-mindedly.

“Hmmm, huh, what the-,” Erwin began as the creature suddenly pulled itself out of the pool and reached for the bucket, “Ah-ah no, no! Don’t be greedy!”

It let out a disappointed click before slipping back into the pool for the rest of its hoard.

Rick couldn't stop laughing, “Maybe he’s a cat!”

Present

“Dear god,” Bruce could barely say aloud as if the breath had been knocked out of him. There he was, his boy, Tim, in that tank. He gazed back at the crowd now gathered around his tank watching him in awe.  
For a moment, Bruce had thought he was seeing things until he got to see his face, though somewhat changed, he could still recognize the boy’s features in them. Only when he started moving did it finally sink in. The rest of his body now that of an aquatic creature, a long tail that reached more than six feet long propelled him through the water. Bruce’s eyes widened in shock as he watched on, his body unwilling to move and voice not working.  
Dick on the other hand...

“Oh God, Tim!” the next voice resounded much louder, with Dick now pressing himself up against the glass, pounding at it, “Tim, Tim! Can you hear me!?”

People were visibly disturbed as they began to turn, pushed aside and distracted by his yells, he must have looked insane but to Dick at this point, it was the least of his worries when Tim was right there in front of them.  
He continued to pound on the glass until the mer took notice, for a moment he didn’t seem to understand, but as Dick continued beating at the glass, a look of disorientation passed over his features and he bared his teeth at the threat and hissed, darting back to the other side of the tank.

“Tim!” By now Jason had returned, noticing the commotion and Damian and Bruce continued to stare in shock. Along with Jason, some security personnel arrived as well.

“Sir, sir, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

“No! You don’t understand, that’s my brother in there!”

“Did he fall in?” another guard asked.

“No officer, that creature, he looks just like our missing brother...” Damian hadn’t turned to look at them as he answered, eyes still transfixed on the now empty tank.

Both guards seemed at a loss at what to do at this point, now clearly having escalated from general disturbance to a case of grief, Jason hadn’t seen what happened but he could kind of tell.

“I’m sorry, they’re just in mourning, we all are. I didn’t see what happened but my brother wouldn’t start something like this for fun.”

“I understand sir, but it is disturbing the other visitors..” the guard trailed off unsure of how to resolve this.

Bruce finally seemed to find his voice as he spoke, “Can we see whoever’s in charge here? I need to speak with them.”

He turned to both men and continued, “Tell them, it’s Bruce Wayne making the request.”

They both took a stunned glance at each other, the situation growing way out of hand and out of their scope. They nodded once and left to contact the management.

Jason turned to Bruce and groaned, “Please don’t tell me you’re planning to buy out the whole aquarium.”


End file.
